Cats and Dogs in Hawaii
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7/5/2017 Lives in the Balance: Cat Advocates and Wildlife Conservationists Work Together in Hawaii : The Humane Society of the United States JULY 26, 2013 Lives in the Balance Cat advocates and conservationists aren’t known for their collaboration. In Hawaii an HSUSled coalition has set out to change that—by keeping cats safe and away from threatened and endangered wildlife. All Animals magazine, July/August 2013 by Karen E. Lange M ike Lohr gives a shrill whistle and looks up, scanning the treetops for two birds who could help save a species. Once the Oahu 'elepaio was common on this island. Today fewer than 2,000 exist. Pushed out of 95 percent of their range by sugar and pineapple plantations, military bases, and housing developments, they inhabit a mere 21 square miles in all the earth. Even in the species' remaining habitat, the birds are under threat, struggling to adapt to a transformed landscape. http://www.humanesociety.org/news/magazines/2013/07-08/lives-in-the-balance-cats-and-wildlife-in-hawaii.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ 1/8 7/5/2017 Lives in the Balance: Cat Advocates and Wildlife Conservationists Work Together in Hawaii : The Humane Society of the United States An endangered Oahu 'elepaio perches in the mountains outside Honolulu. Hayataro Sakitsu Lohr, an ecologist with The Wildlife Society, steps off a state park trail in the Ko'olau range northeast of Pearl Harbor to search for the pair of 'elepaios. The trees into which he peers—lemon eucalyptus and strawberry guavas—are exotics. And the gully into which he descends, shuffling down a slope that drops abruptly to a wash of broken tree limbs and mud, has been taken over by another import, feral pigs: their footprints roil the forest floor. Carried to Hawaii in canoes and ships, pigs, as well as rats, mongooses, and cats, entered island ecosystems relatively recently, millions of years after winds and ocean currents brought the original flora and fauna, plant by plant, bird by bird. Lacking the instincts to avoid being eaten, many native bird species went extinct. They are still disappearing, with eight lost just since 1983 when Lohr was born. Yet here, a short distance from an easy hike called the 'Aiea Loop Trail, exists a little enclave of a creature that's part of Hawaiian folklore, a native bird that's managed to survive. Using his digital bird call, biologist Mike Lohr looks for a pair of Oahu 'elepaios in a state park that's home to a cat colony and other introduced predators like rats. Marco Garcia/For The HSUS A British tourist first spotted the pair in 2011. Since then, Lohr has seen the male and female many times, watching as they claimed this gully for their own. He's observed with a pang the destruction of a nest by a predator—most likely a rat—and the two birds' failure to reproduce. Feisty and territorial, 'elepaios usually show themselves quickly when they hear what they believe to be another of their species trespassing. Right now, in late 2012, the pair is fattening up for the breeding season, so it takes Lohr several tries. He uses his digital bird call. Eventually, two reddish brown and black birds appear, flitting from branch to branch 30 feet up, white bellies flashing. Their bills click as they pursue insects. The male snags a moth. To the west on Oahu, 'elepaio numbers dropped steeply between the 1990s and early 2000s. Here in the Ko'olau range, the population has risen, from two to 10 pairs. Maybe it's that the birds are nesting higher in trees, reducing the likelihood rats will reach their nests. Maybe it's that the 'elepaios have developed resistance to two introduced diseases: avian pox and malaria. Whatever the reason, the 'Aiea Loop 'elepaios represent hope for the species. “There's something special about this population. … There's some evidence that they're evolving,” says Lohr, president of the Hawaii chapter of The Wildlife Society. “What conservation biologists are trying to do is buy them enough time.” But the birds Lohr has been monitoring have chosen a precarious spot. Just above the gully, a cat colony has grown to over 100, as new cats show up around a parking lot. If the 'elepaios manage to hatch a baby, Lohr fears the youngster will almost certainly be eaten before he learns to fly. Freeroaming cats gather outside a state park on Oahu. Marco Garcia/For The HSUS Ideally, TNR (TrapNeuterReturn), which is being attempted here, would stabilize and eventually reduce cat numbers. Many groups, including The HSUS, support TNR as a humane alternative to trapping and killing, which outside of small http://www.humanesociety.org/news/magazines/2013/07-08/lives-in-the-balance-cats-and-wildlife-in-hawaii.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ 2/8 7/5/2017 Lives in the Balance: Cat Advocates and Wildlife Conservationists Work Together in Hawaii : The Humane Society of the United States islands has failed to reduce numbers (remaining cats quickly breed back). TNR has worked in places on Oahu and across the U.S. It's not working along the 'Aiea Loop Trail because of an influx of freeroaming and abandoned pets. Felines—orange, calico, grey and white, black and white—congregate near the trailhead. Wellfed and healthy, they return visitors' gazes with mild curiosity—unaware of the charges leveled against them. There are cats who haven't been sterilized (their ears aren't notched), and cats who could potentially be placed for adoption—they're obviously not feral. An 8monthold kitten walks onto the road and lets himself be scratched behind the ears by HSUS Hawaii state director Inga Gibson. Another rubs against Gibson's legs, like he's waiting for her to fill his food bowl. Gibson shakes her head because she knows the cat might thrive as someone's pet. Dwayne De Ocampo, the state park caretaker, emerges from his house and commiserates with Lohr and Gibson over the animals people drop off, despite a big sign telling them not to. "They let go all kinds. Somebody let go a rabbit. I found a goose. … I cannot stop them." Lohr, who as a graduate student located the remains—heads, tails, radio transmitters—of bobwhites he was studying in the outdoor crawl space of a home with a freeroaming cat, wants the colony gone, even if that means the cats will be euthanized. The volunteer managing the colony either can't keep up or doesn't take friendly cats to shelters for fear they won't be adopted. HSUS Hawaii state director Inga Gibson beckons to a cat near the 'Aiea Loop Trail, where a colony has grown to 100 animals. Marco Garcia/For The HSUS Gibson, charged with protecting both cats and wildlife, and convinced that neither will be safe without the cooperation of all sides, is looking for a middle way: trying to get friendly cats adopted, to keep feral ones from living near the most vulnerable creatures, to bridge a cultural divide. It's why she's accompanied Lohr here, even though she winces at some of his descriptions of the problem. And why she's been prodding and cajoling experts with opposing views into forming a coalition: “One person is going to say, ‘no cats,' and another person is going to say, ‘The cats are fine where they are.' I say, ‘reduce—prevent more cats. If necessary, move.'” Bridging the Divide W ith its mild climate and lack of coyotes and other feline predators, Hawaii has one of the densest populations of freeroaming cats in the U.S. Estimates vary wildly, from at most 100,000 animals to maybe a million—300,000 on urban Oahu and an incredible 500,000 on sparsely populated Maui. That's double the speculated cathuman ratio nationally. Isolated in the pacific, Hawaii also has the densest concentration of threatened and endangered bird species in the country, with groundnesting and groundfeeding water and shorebirds that are especially vulnerable to cats: It's on islands like Hawaii's that the few cases of cats contributing to extinctions have been documented. And the state is home to 1,200 critically endangered monk seals. Toxoplasmosis—a disease sometimes spread to wildlife by the feces of infected cats— may have contributed to the deaths of at least five. On the mainland, wildlife and cat advocates snipe at each other, taking equally unyielding positions—that all freeroaming cats should be trapped and killed; that outdoor cats are a natural part of the landscape; that TNR is "hoarding"; that TNR alone will prevent cats preying on wildlife; that cats are the main threat to birds (versus habitat loss and window strikes and global warming and pesticides); that cat predation has no impact on dwindling songbird populations. In 2011, a http://www.humanesociety.org/news/magazines/2013/07-08/lives-in-the-balance-cats-and-wildlife-in-hawaii.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ 3/8 7/5/2017 Lives in the Balance: Cat Advocates and Wildlife Conservationists Work Together in Hawaii : The Humane Society of the United States Smithsonian scientist was convicted of putting rat poison and antifreeze in food left for cats outside her Washington, D.C., apartment building. In March, an Audubon contributor proposed that an overthecounter pain reliever be used to rid the outdoors of cats (he later apologized). What coalition members are coming up with could serve as a model for the rest of the country—if it can work on Hawaii, where the challenges are so great, it might work anywhere.